


in love may you find the next shore

by kazra



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, kind of, pre-apocalyptic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2015-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 12:15:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3290000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kazra/pseuds/kazra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She likes the way she draws her eyeliner on extra thick and that cold look in her eyes like a storm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in love may you find the next shore

She meets her in biology class.

For weeks, she sits behind her, just observing. The assurance in her motions, slim fingers gripping chewed pencils, doodles at the edge of her notebook, attention trained out the window, a presence that cannot be contained by four walls. She drums her fingers on her desk and thinks about catching her attention, somehow.

Instead, she draws the outside. Trees and birds and trivial things; the view from her window. The teacher drones on—something about the effects radiation can have on flora and fauna. It doesn’t seem important at the time. 

And then, one day, as they pass each other in the hallway: “My name is Clarke. I sit behind you in biology.”

She grins, looking her up and down as if sizing her up. She likes the way she draws her eyeliner on extra thick and that cold look in her eyes like a storm. “Lexa,” she finally says. “Do you want to get lunch with me?”

It’s the start of something. Shy smiles and flickering glances. A feeling in her chest like the air in her lungs is not quite air but something lighter. 

 

—

 

It’s 10:47 PM and they sit in an almost empty parking lot in front of a strip mall. Fast food wrappers lay crumpled in the backseat of Lexa’s car, and the aroma of oil and salt fades out of cracked windows through which the music of Clarke’s playlist equally leaks. Almost absentmindedly, Lexa reaches her hand towards Clarke and twirls her blonde hair through her fingers.

“Let’s go somewhere,” she says, not looking at Clarke but at some distant point through the windshield, above the broken lighted sign of the 24 hour Walmart. 

Clarke leans into the touch, just slightly, and Lexa does not take back her hand.

“I know a place,” she says. 

_Somewhere_ is a playground just outside of Clarke’s neighborhood. She could remember her mother taking her here to play when she was younger, but returning it looked a lot more broken down than she remembered. Clarke half expected Lexa to say something about her childish choice but she didn’t—she just walked towards the swing set and kicked off into the air. 

“The best part about this place is the view,” Clarke says, lying back into the grass despite the dampness.

“Is this what you wanted to show me, Clarke?” Lexa asks, leaving the swing set to lie down next to Clarke. “The stars?” Her voice is all mocking but Clarke can hear the grin in her words. Clarke blushes and hopes it isn’t noticeable in the darkness. 

“Not a bad time to think about heaven with the current state of the world, right?”

“Don’t be such a downer,” Lexa says. “If that’s something you believe, anyway.”

“What do you believe?” Clarke asks, only in part because she wants to know the answer—the other reason being that she wants to keep hearing her talk.

She doesn’t respond immediately. 

“That we’re born again, later. Into different bodies. Reincarnation, I guess is what you call it.” Uncertainty breaks her smooth cadence into staccato bursts. Clarke longs to reach for her hand. She seems to find her voice, and continues, “That after I die my soul will persevere in another life.”

There’s something proud in the way she says it, but vulnerable as well. Lexa looks at her, and there’s a sort of bareness in her eyes that seems like a challenge. Clarke averts her gaze back towards the sky, her own heart beating just a bit faster. 

The stars, they look so far. Clarke scrunches grass between her fingers. She can feel the dampness in the soil, the ground solidly beneath her. 

“If I were to be reincarnated could I be born into the same time as you?” It isn’t the question she wants to ask, but it makes Lexa laugh. 

“Possibly,” she says. “Is that something you would want?”

She can feel the weight of Lexa’s gaze, a hard stare like steel blades, but she doesn’t return the look just yet. 

She takes her time remembering the moment. She’ll draw it later; dewey grass in the moonlight, rusted swing set, and the two girls lying side by side. 

“Yeah,” she says finally, and she grins. “That’s something I would want.” 

She turns to Lexa, and then it’s all soft lips, bumped noses, giggles and sighs. They cling to each other almost desperately, two souls making a transient connection in the vast expanse of space and time. 

 

—

 

As it turns out, it doesn’t last. It’s the wrong time, wrong place—missed chances and botched opportunities. There’s a war starting that was bigger than them—bigger than anyone. Normal life shatters and no one tries to learn how to pick up the pieces in the fallout.

Their goodbye is brief as time becomes something to compete against. 

“For all we know, we’ve still got our next lives,” Lexa says, a statement that forces out a short, biting laugh from her. Neither of them are much for parting words, and it feels ominous in a time that itself feels like an ending.

A hard embrace, unsaid words and held back tears, and then—

“May we meet again,” Clarke whispers, and she’s not sure where the words come from but they feel right. 

A whispered response she doesn’t quite catch, and then she’s gone, leaving Clarke to feel at what everyone is calling the end of days: a spark like a beginning.

 


End file.
